Douglas Ficek, Ph.D.

I soon realized that there is — and has long been — a profound intersection between philosophy and black studies, an intersection populated by some truly remarkable thinkers. And the more I read — from Alain Locke to Cornel West, from Anna Julia Cooper to Angela Y. Davis — the more I wanted to pursue Africana philosophy as a graduate student.

That desire ultimately brought me to New York City and to the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University, where I did my M.A. under the careful guidance of Manning Marable and Jim Murray, both of whom, I am sorry to say, have passed on. In addition to doing research for the Malcolm X and Africana Criminal Justice Projects, I completed a thesis titled "C.L.R. James and Religion."

After graduation, I began teaching as an adjunct faculty all over New York City — from Touro College to Boricua College, from LaGuardia Community College to the College of New Rochelle. I also began my doctoral work in philosophy at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA. Needless to say, this required an absurd amount of commuting.

Why Temple University? Quite simply, because I wanted to work with Lewis R. Gordon, a philosopher whose work I had admired since randomly finding a copy of Existentia Africana in the summer of 2000 — yet another major turning point for me. Under his supervision, I completed and successfully defended a dissertation titled "Man Is a Yes: Fanon, Liberation, and the Playful Politics of Philosophical Archaeology."

Having taught at John Jay College of Criminal Justice for roughly ten years, I am now Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of New Haven, which is located in West Haven, Connecticut.  Once again, I find myself doing lots of commuting.  I am married to Rosario Torres-Guevara, Assistant Professor of Developmental Skills at Borough of Manhattan Community College, and we have an awesome cat named Compadre.

To find out more about Professor Ficek, visit his website at http://www.douglasficek.com/